The Shippers(53)

Finn was still waiting for my response to his invitation.

So I turned to Finn—not as the ten-year-old me he’d kissed, or the fourteen-year-old me who’d memorized his license plate number, or even the yesterday me who was so nervous she got a score of three hundred seventy-nine in mini golf.

Just as regular old me.

Regular me who was ready to take a good, hard look at her destiny, at last.

I met his eyes. Then I smiled with every tooth I had. Then I said, “Finn Turner! I thought you’d never ask.”



* * *



DID COOPER AVOID looking at me all through dinner?

I don’t know. Maybe.

Or maybe he had indigestion.

We were, of course, seated together at the same table with Finn. And we did, of course, sit three in a row—me in the middle again. This was all decreed on Ashley’s spreadsheet.

What wasn’t part of the spreadsheet—certainly not on our second night—was the sudden addition of Bridesmaid Two on Cooper’s other side.

What a fourth wheel.

The fact is, Cooper and I should’ve been celebrating.

His failed hickey hadn’t failed at all. In fact, it might be the most accomplished hickey in all of human history. Not to mention the lady he’d given it to might still have been experiencing a few aftershocks of delighted shivers, even all this time later.

I’d have to add that to my letter of recommendation.

But instead of getting to savor this triumph with my wingman, I had to spend all of dinner watching Bridesmaid Two leaning against Cooper’s shoulder and squeezing her boobs together to create a type of cleavage that felt aggressive, to say the least.

I had to actively look away to preserve my appetite.

Seriously.

She was leaning over so far, she had to bring her fork over from her plate at a 45-degree angle with every bite.

I think at one point she dropped a pea down there.

All to say: Maybe Cooper wasn’t avoiding me after all. Maybe Bridesmaid Two was just making him nauseous.

Finn, on my other side, kept getting texts that he had to respond to. “I’m so sorry. I have to take this,” he kept saying, getting up to step away from the table. But during those times, I couldn’t talk to Cooper because Bridesmaid Two was relentlessly hogging his attention, asking all about his life: What was the best thing about London (“the pubs”), could he do a British accent (“sometimes”), and what did he miss about Texas (“the sky”).

Bridesmaid Two was mostly asking Cooper all about his job like she was the first person to ever make vocational chitchat. It bugged me for many reasons, but I guess the biggest one was that she was getting answers even I didn’t have. And I’d always had all the answers about Cooper.

Yet somehow here I was, eavesdropping.

She forced Cooper to describe the studio where he worked, and list movies he’d done, and explain how he created all kinds of sounds. And dammit, it was fascinating. He snapped stalks of celery, for example, to make the sound of breaking bones. He recorded bacon frying to make the sound of rain. He whooshed a stalk of bamboo past the mic to make the sound of an arrow.

“What about kissing?” Bridesmaid Two dared to ask.

“That’s easy,” Cooper said, “you just kiss your forearm.”

I side-glanced over to see him roll back his shirtsleeve to reveal his naked forearm underneath—and then lean forward to demonstrate what he meant.

I meant to look away. I really did. But my eyes got stuck.

At the sight of him bending down, parting his lips, and then pressing them against his own skin … things seemed to shift into slo-mo for a second.

Was Cooper Watts Frenching his own forearm at the dinner table?

Whatever was going on, I’ll be honest: My hickey might’ve tingled a bit at the sight of it.

That is, until Finn returned to his seat, patted me on the hand, and said, “Where were we?”

Ripped back to reality, I turned and said, “You were telling me about how you review contracts.”

Was I jealous that I was listening to Finn use legal terms like mutual covenants and agreements while Bridesmaid Two got to watch Cooper passionately smooching his own arm?

Yes. Yes, I was.

Bridesmaid Two was having so much fun, she wasn’t even interrupting.

Which felt massively unfair.

Even though, technically, I was getting what I wanted.

I forced myself to notice that Operation Conquest was starting to work.

Wasn’t that what I was here for, after all?

I needed to refocus!

Whenever Finn was at the table, I doubled down on my How to Make a Man Fall in Love with You research and asked him all about himself. My plan was to launch endless searching questions about his interests and talents. According to the book, asking people about themselves makes them think that you are fascinating.

But now, inspired in part by Bridesmaid Two’s cleavage, I added some physicality to my conversation with Finn. When I asked him about his class ring, I made sure to reach out and brush his fingers with mine. When I laughed, I touched him on the shoulder. And once, when I stood up to go to the ladies’ room, I pretended to lose my balance so I could fall sideways onto his lap and let him catch me.

I won’t confirm or deny if I tried to use my own cleavage as a weapon, but let’s just say Bridesmaid Two wasn’t the only person in the dining room who could lean toward a man at a 45-degree angle.